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ShoeJftakuwL 



Old and New 



FRED A. GANNON 



A short history of the 
American Shoe Manufacturing Industry. 
The marvelous progress that has been made S 






Copyright by 

FRED A. GANNON 

1911 



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Printed by 

NEVVCOMB & GAUSS 

Salein. Mass. 



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SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTERS. 



Part 1. First shoes and shoemakers in 
America. Indians and moccasins. First 
shoemalcers came on Mayflower. 

Part 2. Colonial shoemakers. Their 
hard struggle for existence. Shoemakers 
cut hair, pulled teeth and did other things. 

Part 3. The time of the "Ten Foot- 
ers." Shoemakers used the lap stone and 
flat face hammer. 

Part 4. Union store period. Shoemak- 
ers were paid in groceries and dragged 
them home in a cart. 

Part 5. Story of Ebenezer Breed, who 
established the protective tariff on shoes, 
and died in an almshouse. 

Part 6. Howe's great invention of the 
sewing machine. His dream of what his 
genius failed to discover. 

Part 7. John B. Nichols made the 
Howe machine sew leather. 

Part 8. Blake's great invention of the 
McKay machine, and the revolution in 
shoemaking that it caused. 

Part 9. The story of the lasting ma- 
chine, showing how a genius from Dutch 
Guiana revolutionized the lasting of 
American shoes. 

Part 10. The general development of 
machinery, Including the Goodyear ma- 
chine and the pegging machine, and the 
benefits from it. 

Part 11. American leather making. The 
story of the chrome process. 



Shoe Making 



Part 12. Organization of the factory 
system, showing how the individual work- 
man became a part of an organization 
and how he was benefitted. 

Part 13. The Greater New England 
movement. 

Part 14. Organization of the machin- 
ery system of shoemaking by the U. S. 
M. Co. and its benefits to the trade and 
the people. 

Part 15. Development of transporta- 
tion of shoes from the time of the "bag 
boss" to modern swift express service. 

Part 16. Development of shoe styles 
from colonial to 20th century fashions, 
the use of blacking, of laces and but- 
tons and the development of the modern 
repair business. 

Part 17. Clogs, pattens and goloshes 
and modern rubbers. The story of Good- 
year's invention of the method of vul- 
canizing rubber. 







UK^ W * 




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PART I 



In the manufacture of boots and 
shoes the United States is the fore- 
most nation in the world today. 
The industry of making boots and 
shoes is among the most important 
industries of the nation today and 
it is also among the oldest. An in- 
quiry into the rise of the industry 
from its humble beginnings of co- 
lonial times to its splendid pros- 
perous, but, very complex state, 
of today, reveals some interesting 
changes in commercial and social 
life, as well as in the mechanics 
and economics of manufacturing. 

The first white people in this 
country of course brought over 
their boots and shoes from the 
European mother countries, and 
they were for a long time depend- 
ent upon the mother countries for 
additional supplies of footwear. 
There were, in the first days of 
the settlements, no big factories, 
such as there are today, nor even 
BJiy little shoe shops or **ten foot- 
ers,*' as the shops occupied by the 
old fashioned hand shoemakers 
were called. The colonists found 
only forests and wild lands inhab- 
ited by Indians and animals. 

The Indians made leather by 
primative processes and they used 
the leather for their garments and 




wigwams. They sewed two or 
three pieces of leather together to 
make a sock, called a moccasin. 
Pioneers among the white men put 
on me moccasins of the Indians 
and used leather tanned by In- 
dians for making hunting shirts, 
trousers and leggings. Some of 
the settlers in the towns wore 
footwear and clothing of leather 
made by the Indians, when sup- 
plies from Europe were scant. 

The American shoe manufactur- 
ing industry appears to have had' 
its beginning in Salem, Massachu- 
setts. Thomas Beard and Isaac 
Eickerman settled in Salem in 
1629, coming on the Mayflower, on 
her second voyage. They were 
shoemakers by trade and they are 
the first shoemakers of record in 
this country. Philip Kertland, a 
shoemaker, settled in Lynn in 1635 
and was the first shoemaker in 
that now celebrated shoe manufac- 
turing city. 

The shoemakers who came to 
this country in its early day were 
most welcome men. The rough 
lands of the new country, broken 
only by rude roads and paths, 
wore out quickly even the strong- 
est boots. It was difficult to get 
new boots for it was necessary to 
send to Europe for them, until the 
shoemakers came. Beard and 
Eickerman were considered so val- 
uable to the colony at Salem 
that they were to have their board 
and houseroom at the expense of 
the colony. Kertland was granted 



Old and New 



ten acres of land by Lynn. The 
little town of Reading, in Massa- 
chusetts, granted its first shoe- 
maker ''rights to wood and herb- 
age, ' ' meaning that he could gath- 
er from the town lands such wood 
as he wished for fuel and herbs 
as he wished for medicine without 
cost. 

These early shoemakers brought 
over "the art and mystery of shoe- 
making,'' as the trade was called 
in colonial times. They brought 
it from Europe as a trade new to 
this land, but ancient in Europe. 
Beginnings of this "art and mys- 
tery of shoemaking" may be 
traced even back to ancient Egypt, 
for methods of some of the Egyp- 
tian shoemakers, as pictured on 
the walls of tombs at Thebes cor- 
respond to methods of the hand 
shoemakers of former days in this 
country, ^he new industry was 
very slow in starting in this coun- 
try but after it once had a good 
start it flourished mightily, and it 
accomplished more in a few years 
for the men engaged in it, as well 
as for the world at large, than had 
been accomplished in Europe in 
more than 2000 years. 

The shoe industry in this coun- 
try has so prospered that the 
United States now makes about 
$500,000,000 worth of boots and 
shoes annually. It produces about 
300,000,000 pairs, which averages 
about three pairs to each person 
in the country. It sells $10,000,- 
000 worth of shoes to foreign 
countries each year. It provides 
people with the best footwear at 



Shoe Making 



the lowest prices that they ever 
have had. 

The rise of the American shoe 
industry from its small beginnings 
to its present splendid position 
makes one of the most interesting 
chapters in industrial history. 



Old and New 



PART II 



The first shoemakers in the col- 
onies, though most welcome, found 
a very poor market for products 
of their skill. People needed shoes, 
it is true, but there were only a 
few people in the colonies, and 
they were spread out along the en- 
tire Atlantic Coast among the 13 
colonies, in little settlements, and 
in isolated cabins in clearings of 
the forest. New England was the 
manufacturing section of the col- 
onies, and, naturally, led in shoe 
manufacturing. There were some 
Dutch shoemakers in New York. 
The Southern colonies were agri- 
cultural communities and they de- 
pended largely upon the artisans 
of New England and of Europe 
for their manufactured goods of 
all kinds. 

The struggle for existence was 
keen in colonial days. Necessity 
compelled settlers to become jacks 
of all trades. The farmer often 
tanned hides and skins from his 
own cattle, or from beasts of the 
field, which he hunted. He hunted 
deer, bear, and the wolf for their 
flesh for food. He used for tanning 
the pelts bark from trees close by 
his cabin. He sank a hogshead or 
an old boat, or box, in his yard for 
a vat. Sometimes he cut up this 
leather and made it into garments, 



Shoe Making 



coats and trousers too, as well as 
boots and shoes. 

Many of the first shoemakers 
found insufficient employment in 
the settlements. There were not 
enough people to buy their shoes 
to keep them busy all the time. 
Some of thesa shoemakers became 
jacks of all trades while others be- 
came traveling shoemakers. 

The jack of all trades undertook 
to sharpen knives, saws and axes, 
and to mend furniture, tinker 
clocks, teach singing, cut hair, and 
even to pull teeth, for the shoe- 
maker was the only person in the 
settlement who had pincers. 
Thomas Bowler, of Lynn, com- 
bined the tasks of town clerk with 
those of shoemaker. He charged 
ten cents an hour for his work as 
town clerk, for that was the 
amount he earned as a shoemaker. 

The traveling shoemaker packed 
his kit, and his stock of leather in 
a bag, threw the bag over his 
shoulder, and walked from settle- 
ment to settlement, seeking work. 
He was warmly received at many 
an isolated home. Not only did 
he bring the means of providing 
new footwear, and of mending the 
old, but he also brought the news 
and gossip of the time, which he 
cheerfully dispensed and dis- 
cussed, as he sat in the warm 
chimney place and worked over 
his last, with the settler and his 
family gathered around him. 

The kit of the colonial shoe- 
maker was necessarily quite sim- 
ple. He had a flat face hammer 
and an awl and pincers and 



Old and New 



knives, which he brought from 
England with him, a lap stone 
that was picked up on the sea- 
shore, some hand forged nails, 
some linen thread spun perhaps 
by housewives of New England, 
some wax from the bee hives of 
colonial farms, and leather im- 
ported from Europe or possibly 
made by some early tanner. His 
product was crude, for he had 
only crude tools and materials 
with which to work. 

The leather was rough and 
heavy. It was bark tanned. It 
was stuffed with oil from fish of 
the sea, which was quite plentiful 
in colonial times, since the sea- 
faring men made oil for export to 
Europe. But the leather was not 
glazed, or polished, as is leather 
of to-day. 

The shoes made by the colonial 
shoemakers, though not hand- 
some, were strong and serviceable, 
and well endured the hard wear 
which they got on the rough 
roads. As the colonies increased 
in wealth and population, the 
well-to-do people called for fine 
shoes. For them, some fine shoes 
were imported from London, and 
Paris. A few enterprising shoe- 
makers imported fine leather from 
abroad, and made stylish shoes, 
particularly buckled slippers for 
the beaux, and dancing slippers 
for the belles. 



Shoe Making 



PART III 



Shoemaking was a picturesque 
industry in the first half of the 
19th century. Whittier portrayed 
some interesting aspects of it in 
his ''Cobbler Keezar" and other 
poems. 

The typical shoe shop of New 
England of a century ago was a 
wooden building ten feet square, 
or the size of a small living room 
in a house of today. It had one 
room with a stud of six and one 
half feet so that a tall shoemaker 
had to take off his hat when en 
tering it. It also had a garret in 
which was kept a wonderful mis- 
cellany of discarded articles such 
as old lasts and tools, umbrellas, 
broken clocks, chairs, candle rig- 
gers, old boots and shoes and 
other trumpery. The old time 
shoemaker religiously believed 
that everything came into use 
again once in seven years, and so 
saved everything. 

Such shops as there were, were 
scattered over New England in 
the farming regions as well as in 
the manufacturing centers. It was 
a common practice for a farmer 
to till his farm in the summer time 
and to spend his winter making 
shoes, or for a fisherman to fish in 
the summer time and make shoes 
in the winter. 



lO 



Old and New 



The interior of a shoe shop of 
a century ago would amuse a shoe- 
maker of today. On the sunny 
side was the shoemaker's bench or 
seat. The salamander stove was 
in the middle. Leather tubs for 
soaking soles and miscellaneous 
supplies were scattered over the 
floor. A couple of extra chairs 
were placed for the convenience 
of visitors. On the wall was a bat- 
tered clock, a notice of a political 
meeting or picture of the cobbler's 
favorite candidate. 

The shoemaker worked **on a 
seat " or a low stool, having a low 
bench attached to it to pro- 
vide room for his kit. The 
"seat" corresponded to the 
*'seat" on which the cobbler 
of today works. Sometimes 
shoemakers shared a shop. Then 
it was a problem to divide up the 
room evenly and to place each 
man so that he would not strike 
his neighbor when he ** swung 
out" with his waxed ends in sew- 
ing a shoe. 

The first shops were heated by 
an open fire-place. When stoves 
became common shoemakers set 
them up in their shops. They 
showed favor for the style of 
stove called "the salamander.'* 
But the shops were loosely built, 
and it was a difficult matter to get 
them comfortably warm even with 
the hottest kind of a fire. Some 
shoemakers crept so close to the 
fire to keep warm that they actu- 
ally wore "shin boards'' to pre- 
vent the flames from scorching 
their legs. Yet the cold winds 



Shoe Making 



pierced through the cracks in the 
doors, windows and walls, and 
struck the shoemaker in the back 
and made him shiver. Of course, 
in the summer time the old fash- 
ioned shoe shop with its leaky 
walls was comfortable. 

It is a tradition that shoemakers 
on very cold days used to debate 
whether it would cost more to heat 
the shop than they could earn. To 
decide the problem an unlucky ap- 
prentice lad was captured and set 
down onto a wet lap stone. If he 
froze to the stone it was too cold 
to work. So the shoemaker^ went 
home, either to play cards by the 
fireside or to get a gun and go 
hunting. 

Johnson says in his "Sketches of 
Lynn" that the following tools and 
appliances were regarded as neces- 
sary by the old fashioned shoe- 
maker : 

"A lap stone, hammer, stirrup, 
whet board, pincers, nippers, 
shoulder stick, long stick, petti- 
bois, toe-stick, fender, bead, scrap- 
er, knives of different sorts, such 
as skiver, paring off knife, heel 
knife, etc., awl, bristles, tacks, 
beeswax, a piece of sponge, 
paste horn, bottle for blacking, 
gum and acid, chalk, dog fish skin, 
stitch rag, grease, channel-opener 
and apron." 

The shoemaker of today would 
be quite as much at loss to handle 
all these old fashioned tools as 
would be the cordwainer of a cen- 
tury ago to operate the machinery 
of factories today. 



Old and New 



The lap stone of the old time 
shoemaker was sometimes selected 
from the stones of a neighboring 
beach or field, or in rare cases, it 
might have been secured by the 
shoemaker in some foreign land 
that he visited when he was a sail- 
or before the mast. 

The stirrup, a leather strap, 
was primarily intended for use 
in strapping a shoe to the last, 
but it frequently served as a 
means for disciplining or stimu- 
lating the training of an appren- 
tice. Some jocose shoemakers 
pasted a sign on the wall of their 
shop reading ''Strap Oil for Sale 
Here." When a small boy of a 
century ago was told to go to the 
shoemakers for some strap oil he 
foresaw that a painful scene wa^ 
to be enacted in the woodshed. 

Colonial shoemakers often took 
pay for their work in corn, beaver 
skins, wampum or any other com- 
modity that served as a substitute 
for money in the colonial days, 
when real money was scarce. 
Towards the close of the colonial 
period wages of shoemakers rose 
as high as 70 cents a day, in cash. 
Today, shoemakers of high skill 
can sometimes earn 70 cents an 
hour. The General Court of Massa- 
chusetts undertook to regulate the 
industry of shoemaking. At one 
time it forbade tanners to make 
shoes, or shoemakers to make 
leather on the ground that a man 
should not have two trades, lest 
he injure another man. In the 
colony of New York there was 
actually prosecution of tanners 



Shoe Making 



and shoemakers for maintaining 
a monopoly. 

The General Court of Massa- 
chusetts also forbade persons of 
mean estate, or scant wealth, to 
wear great boots, or other expen- 
sive footwear. This law was in- 
tended to prevent extravagance 
in dress by people who could not 
afford rich apparel. 

James Everell was a great shoe- 
maker in Boston along in 1650. 
He employed several journeymen 
to work for him. He made fine 
boots and shoes for the wealthy 
merchants of Boston, and for the 
crown officers, and their families. 
He made some second grade shoes 
which were sold as ready made 
shoes to the poorer folk of the 
town and colony. It is tradition 
that he even exported shoes. 

Everell owned the property 
that is now bounded by Hanover, 
Elm and Uiiion streets in Boston. 
He secured from the town officials 
a permission to sink pits, **to 
water his leather in." He ac- 
quired much wealth for his time. 
He was a pioneer in making Bos- 
ton an important shoe centre. He 
served as selectman of the town. 

One of the first transactions in 
boots and shoes in the new coun- 
try occurred in 1623, when Gov. 
Bradford, and others of the Ply- 
mouth colony, formed a syndicate 
and raised $250, and sent Isaac 
Ellerton to England to buy shoes, 
stockings and cloth. 



14 



Old and New 



PART IV 



Real cash was scarce a centurj 
a».'0 and credits were long. NevV 
England shoe manufacturers sold 
their shoes to the South and 
the West, as far as it was 
settled, on six, and even on 
nine months' credit. Sometimes 
they accepted wheat, tobacco, 
sugar, cotton, or other commodi- 
ties in payment for their shoes. 

As shoe manufacturers received 
cash for their goods only in small 
quantities, they were able to pay 
their employees only small wages, 
and those wages quite infre- 
quently. It was a common prac- 
tice for a shoe manufacturer of 
60 or 70 years ago to get his em- 
ployes to trust him for their 
wages, until he could sell his shoes 
for cash. Then he would pay them 
their total wages, and a premium 
besides. If he lost on his venture 
his employes lost on their wages. 
A successful Marblehead, Mass., 
shoe manufacturer got his start 
by cutting shoes on top of a pork 
barrel in his grocery store, and by 
getting his customers to make 
his shoes he paid them in grocer- 
ies. 

In Lynn, the practice of paying 
shoemakers with orders on a 
store was developed to a consid- 
erable extent. The Union Store, 



Shoe Making 



a noted store of 1830, was estab- 
lished and carried on by a group 
of Lynn manufacturers. It was 
stocked with goods of all kinds, 
indeed, with everything that a 
man might need in daily life. 

Shoe manufacturers who were 
interested in this store, gave their 
employes, when they brought in 
their manufactured shoes each 
Saturday afternoon, orders on 
the store in payment of wages. 
Each order read "Please deliver 
to the bearer goods to the amount 
of ." 

The amount was never large, 
for wages of shoemakers of 1830 
ranged from $5 to $7 a week, 
when they were paid in orders. 
A man who insisted on cash pay- 
ments of his wages usually had a 
great deal of difficulty in finding 
employment. The orders went 
into circulation, for shoemakers 
used them to pay for goods that 
they bought at stores other than 
the Union Store, and to pay the 
doctor, the druggist and others. 
The orders were accepted as 
worth 60 or 70 per cent of their 
face value, when in general circu- 
lation, but were worth their full 
face value, in exchange for goods 
at the Union Store. 

Fortunately, necessities of life 
were very cheap 80 years ago. 
So a shoemaker who brought in 
his week's work, and got an order 
on the store in payment for 
his wages, was usually able to' ex- 
change that order for enough 
goods to keep himself and his 
family alive for the week. 



i6 



Old and New 



It was common for the shoe- 
maker to fetch to the factory the 
shoes that he had made during 
the week in a bag, or a basket, 
often the family laundry basket, 
or even in a wheel barrow, or a 
cart made by placing a soap box 
on solid wooden wheels. This cart 
he loaded up for his trip back 
home with leather* and supplies 
for his next week's work, and 
with his supplies that he got at 
the store in exchange for his or- 
der. The supplies often consisted 
of a few pounds of corn meal and 
a little molasses, tea or coffee, a 
salt fish, some sugar, a piece of 
butter, a few yards of cloth, a 
new hat, or a piece of crockery. 

Necessities of life were very 
scant indeed a century ago. Men 
knew what it was to go hungry. 
But they struggled on, courage- 
ously seeking better times, and 
manfully building the founda- 
tion of the prosperity that is en- 
joyed by their successors today. 
There were many v_ pleasant 
hours in the life of the shoemaker 
of a century ago. The occupation 
of shoemaking was agreeable to 
many, because a man could read 
from an open book by his side, or 
discuss political topics of the day 
with friends, as he made shoes. 
These facilities for improving the 
mind were taken advantage of by 
many shoemakers. Roger Sher- 
man studied from an open book 
as he made shoes, and so did Hen- 
ry Wilson, ''The Natick Cob- 
bler.*' 

Shoemakers who lacked ambi- 



IX 



Shoe Making 



tion to profitably employ their 
leisure time found many ways to 
idle away the hours. Haverhill 
shoemakers had a curious sche- 
dule of days for absenting them- 
selves from their tasks of shoe- 
making. In April, the Haverhill 
shoemaker would go out one day 
and sun himself on a bank. It 
was his spring medicine. In May. 
he would take a day to plant his 
garden, and in June a day to hoe 
it. In July, he would make hay 
for his cow; in August he would 
pick berries; in September go to 
the shore for a clam bake, and in 
the winter months he would go 
gunning frequently. Once a Haver- 
hill shoemaker felt that he 
wanted a day off, no power 
known to the employers of the 
time could induce him to work. 

In Lynn, almost every shoe- 
maker kept a pig. The slaughter 
of the pig was quite a ceremony. 
The shoemaker and his friends 
celebrated the event as a holiday. 
The pork was packed away for 
use in the winter time. Many 
Lynn shoemakers lived on their 
pork, on dandelions from the 
field and on clams and fish from 
the harbor, during the panic of 
1837, when there was no work for 
them. 

The introduction and use of shoe 
machinery, and the development of 
the factory system, led to increase 
in wages, shortening of hours of la- 
bor, and improvement of product. 



i8 



Old and New 



PART V 



After the Revolution, the new 
nation began to prosper. But its 
shoe manufacturers could not get 
a start in their efforts to develop 
their business. They had im- 
proved the quality and appear- 
ance of their shoes so much that 
the newspapers of the time de- 
clared American made shoes supe- 
rior to the best, imported shoes 
and advised American people to 
buy the home product as a pa- 
triotic duty. But a habit once es- 
tablished, good or bad, is difficult 
to abandon, and the American 
people kept on wearing many im- 
ported shoes. The future looked 
dark for the American shoe manu- 
facturing industry. 

At the critical moment, the 
first great leader of the American 
shoe manufacturing industry ap- 
peared on the scene. This man, 
Ebenezer Breed, proposed that 
Congress should put upon import- 
ed boots and shoes a tariff that 
would keep them out of this coun- 
try, until American shoe manufac- 
turers got opportunity to develop 
their business, and to prove to the 
American people that the Ameri- 
can made shoes were best. After 
much agitation of his idea he con- 
vinced Congress of its merit, and 
a tariff was placed on the Ameri- 



19 



Shoe Making 



can shoe industry, and it remains 
in force even to this day. Behind 
this protective tariff the Ameri- 
can shoe manufacturing industry 
has prospered in a way that has 
amazed the shoe trade of the 
world. 

Breed's career was dramatic. 
He was born in Lynn, Mass., the 
son of Quaker parents. He 
learned the shoe trade. When a 
young man, he went to Philadel- 
phia, then the capital of the na- 
tion. There, his Quaker faith ad- 
mitted him to the best society. 
During his stay in Philadelphia, 
he made the proposition that a 
tariff be placed on boots and 
shoes. Leading people of Phila- 
delphia, to whom he argued his 
plan, agreed to help him. He 
gave a big dinner, to which he in- 
vited leading members of Con- 
gress and prominent citizens of 
Philadelphia. The brilliant Dolly 
Madison was there. During the 
dinner, he made a grandiloquent 
speech. A fragment of it is pre- 
served to-day. 

Soon after the dinner, Congress 
placed a protective tariff on boots 
and shoes. Breed, who engaged 
in the wholesale boot and shoe in- 
dustry, prospered much. He be- 
came one of the early great 
American merchants. He went to 
England where he was received 
by King George and Queen Char- 
lotte. West, the painter, gave him 
a platter with his own portrait 
upon it. He visited Paris, too, 
but there he hid one day in a cel- 
lar until the riot and bloodshed 



20 



Old and New 



T 



of a sad 24 hours in the French 
revolution had passed. 

Breed returned home. He made 
a tour of triumph of his country. 
He was feted everywhere, but he 
quickly fell to the depths of de- 
spair. He loved a Quakeress. Her 
parents refused to permit his at- 
tentions. They declared that he 
drank liquors while in Europe in 
violation of the temperance prin- 
ciples of the Quakers. He tried 
to drown his sorrow in the wine 
cup, and he drank it to the very 
dregs. He^i lost his business, his 
property and even his eye- 
sight. He made his way a broken, 
blinded man to the almshouse in 
his native town of Lynn. 

Some kind person taught him to 
make shoes. He made them as 
best his sightless eyes would let 
him. Some of them he sent to 
Dolly Madison and other friends 
of his prosperous days. They re- 
membered him with gifts. He be- 
came a gentle man again. The chil- 
dren learned to love him and to call 
him ''Uncle Eben" and to lead 
him along the streets as he went 
on visits to friends. One little girl 
brought him baskets of dainties 
from her mother's kitchen. Her 
mother was the Quakeress whom 
Breed had loved. 

The man who was so powerful 
as to build up a great wall of pro- 
tection about the entire American 
shoe trade spent his declining days 
quietly and peacefully in an alms- 
house, forgotten by nearly every- 
one but the Quakers. 



Shoe Making 



PART VI 



Up to the middle of the 19th 
century the uppers of shoes were 
stitched at home by hand. The 
operation was called "binding 
shoes." Lucy Larcom made it 
famous in her poem, "Hannah at 
the Window Binding Shoes." 
Housekeepers in the shoe towns 
commonly kept a lot of shoes in the 
kitchen, and when they sat down 
to rest during the routine of house- 
hold duties, they picked up shoes 
and sewed them to improve their 
moments. Wives and daughters of 
shoemakers commonly '* "bound" 
shoes for the breadwinner of the 
family. Dependent women "bound" 
shoes in order to earn their daily 
bread. By working all day they were 
able to earn 50 or 75 cents. 

The work was tedious and it hurt 
the eyes. But it was very necessary, 
for shoe manufacturers had much 
difficulty in getting shoes enough 
sewed to satisfy the wants of their 
customers. In the homes of some 
prosperous manufacturers it was 
the custom for wives and daughters 
and household servants to sit down 
for half an hour after dinner each 
day and "bind shoes." 

Along in 1850 these things were 
changed. The sewing machine, in- 
vented by Howe, was adapted to 
the sewing of leather by Nichols, 



22 



Old and New 



and the occupation of "binding" 
Bhoes ceased to flourish. 

Elias Howe was a workman in a 
Cambridge machine shop where he 
had come from his boyhood farm 
home at Spencer, Mass. He was of 
a family of inventors. It occurred 
to him one night, as he watched his 
patient wife toiling with the family 
sewing, that he might build a ma- 
chine that would help her. His idea 
was not new. Patents on a sewing 
machine had been taken out in Eng- 
land as early as 1750. Napoleon had 
offered a rich reward to any inven- 
tor who would make a machine that 
would sew shoes. He wanted the 
shoes for his soldiers so that they 
could march and fight better. Howe 
wanted a sewing machine to help 
his wife in her daily work. Na- 
poleon failed; Howe won. 

Howe had a desperate struggle. 
He began to work on his ideas of 
a sewing machine evenings after 
his day's work in the factory was 
done. He became so fascinated 
with his dream of a sewing machine 
that he gave up his place in the fac- 
tory and devoted nearly all his time 
to working on his wonderful inven- 
tion, sparing from it only enough 
time to do odd jobs in machinery or 
to pawn some household possession, 
60 as to provide himself and family 
with daily bread. But they often 
suffered hunger and want. 

After eight years' labor he built 
a machine which took stitches. It 
is a pretty tradition that one night, 
defeated in all his endeavors and at 
hil wit's end, he threw himself down 
to restless sleep. He dreamed that 



23 



Shoe Making 



he was seized by a tribe of strange 
people whose king commanded him 
'■.o stitch him a garment upon his 
sewing machine upon pain of in- 
stant death. His machine refused 
to stitch. Guards seized him to ex- 
ecute him. He noticed that their 
spears had holes near their points, 
not at their butts. Instantly it 
game to him that the eye of the 
needle of the sewing machine should 
be at its point, not at its butt, as 
in the ordinary needle. He made a 
needle with the eye near the point, 
and his sewing machine became a 
success. 

But success had not yet come to 
Howe. Nobody believed in his in- 
vention. He could secure no mon- 
ey with which to build and market 
his machine, despite the fact that 
it was one of the most valuable ma- 
chines in the world's history. He 
had to take a position as a railroad 
engineer to earn his living. 

He was tempted to accept an of- 
fer from England for $1250 for 
the English rights to his patents 
and a position at $15 a week. The 
position in England was disagree- 
able to him. He returned home, 
pawning the model of his sewing 
machine to get money enough to 
pay his passage. When he arrived 
in New York he learned that his 
beloved wife had died of consump- 
tion and that shrewd machinery 
companies had seized upon his in- 
vention and were putting sewing 
machines upon the market. 

He borrowed money, brought suit 
against those who had infringed his 
patents, and won a victory. From 



24 



Old and New 



this time on his career was one of 
much prosperity. Companies mak- 
ing sewing machines had to pay him 
royalties, and at one time he was 
receiving $4000 a day in royalty 
payments. 

He enlisted in the Union army 
during the war as a private. The 
paymaster was slow in coming 
roimd. One day Howe disappeared 
from camp. He returned the next 
day with a big box, from which he 
paid off the entire regiment. For 
his invention he was awarded the 
cross of the Legion of Honor of 
France. He died in 1867. 



25 



Shoe Making 



PART VII 



An early advertisement of sew- 
ing machines, published by I. M. 
Singer & Co., in a Boston news- 
paper in 1851, attracted the at- 
tention of a young shoemaker, 
John Brooks Nichols, of Lynn. 
He was bom in Wakefield, Feb- 
ruary 8, 1823. He learned the 
trade of shoe cutting of his cousin 
Thomas Batfcroft, who had a shop 
in the basement of the Congrega- 
tional church close by Lynn Com- 
mon. After two years as a shoe 
cutter, he bought a retail store 
in Cambridge. This venture 
failed. Then he saw the adver- 
tisement of the sewing machines. 

Mr. Nichols, an ambitious young 
man, was seeking some opening 
with a bright future. He decided 
that the sewing machine would be- 
come of great value. So he bought 
one of the first lot of 25 machines 
that I. M. Singer & Co. made. 

This machine, Mr. Nichols set 
up in a shop on Sudbury street, 
Boston. He established a con- 
tract stitching business, stitching 
pantaloons on the machine. At 
the time, the sewing machine had 
not been perfected for use in 
stitching leather. Mr. Nichols, a 
shoemaker by trade, naturally 
wondered why the machine 
couldn't be made to stitch leather. 



26 



Old and New 



He began to experiment, using 
scraps of kid leather that he 
brought from Lynn shoe facto- 
ries. 

He found that his sewing ma- 
chine wouldn't stitch leather neatly 
because the needle was bigger 
than the thread. The seams were 
loose and the stitches coarse. 

But he was of the opinion 
that his machine could be made to 
stitch leather as nicely as did 
the "binders.'' To make it do so, 
he got around to his shop one and 
one-half hours ahead of time in 
the morning, and he left it one 
and one-half hours late, putting 
in the extra time in his attempts 
to make his machine stitch leath- 
er. 

Finding that the needle was too 
large, he went to the needle manu- 
facturers and got them to make 
needles of new shapes and sizes. 
These needles he filed, and even 
smoothed down with emery paper 
to get them of the desired small 
size. He also went to the manu- 
facturers of silk and cotton 
threads, and got them to make 
new kinds of thread for his ex- 
periments. After months of pa- 
tient labor, he succeeded in stitch- 
ing leather on the machine so that 
its stitches compared favorably 
with the stitches of the shoe bind- 
ers. 

I. M. Singer & Co. undertook to 
put onto the market machines for 
stitching shoes. Thev sold to three 
Lynn manufacturers (Scudder 
Moore, John Wooldredge and 
Walter Keene), rights to use the 



27 

• 



Shoe Making 



machine for stitching leather in 
Essex County. Mr. Nichols be- 
came instructor of operators on 
the machines used by these firms. 
He was paid $3 a day for his ser- 
vices, which was twice the wage 
that he ever received before, and 
a wonderfully high wage for the 
time. 

Mr. Nichols decided that he 
would himself start a contract 
stitching shop. The three manu- 
facturers who had purchased the 
exclusive rights to iise Singer ma- 
chines for stitching shoes in Essex 
County protested to the Singer Co. 
against Mr. Nichols starting in 
business. The Sinerer Co. declined 
to let Mr. Nichols have any ma- 
chines. But he secured a Singer 
machine that the Singer Company 
had sold to his cousin, Thomas 
Bancroft, before they made their 
exclusive agreement with the 
three manufacturers. This ma- 
chine he remodeled so that he 
was able to use it for stitching 
shoes. 

At this time Mr. Nichols first 
heard of Elias Howe. Howe was 
just home from his unhappy Eu- 
ropean trip, and was laying claim 
to his patent rights. Mr. Nichols 
went to him in Cambridge and 
asked for permission to make use 
of his invention in stitching shoes. 
Mr. Howe replied that Mr. 
Nichols was the first man who had 
asked permission to use his inven- 
tion. He furthermore said that 
William R. Bliss, a Worcester shoe 
manufacturer, had the rights to 
use the invention for stitching 

28 



Old and New 



leather. Mr. Bliss was one of the 
good friends who provided Howe 
with money to fight for his patent 
rights. 

Mr. Nichols joined interests 
with Howe and Bliss. Howe, with 
money provided by Bliss, suc- 
ceeded in putting a line of sew- 
ing machines on the market. 
These machines were called the 
Howe improved machine. They 
were built on designs prepared 
by Mr. Nichols. The profit on 
these machines enabled Howe to 
employ counsel and to fight his 
patent suits to a successful finish. 

Mr. Nichols continued in the 
machinery business as a partner 
in the firm of Nichols, Bliss & Co. 
and later of Nichols, Leavitt & 
Co. When the sewing machine was 
new, shoe manufacturers used to 
visit the Nichols & Bliss store in 
Boston, inspect the machine and 
say that it was necessary to give 
them a practical demonstration. 
So he employed shoe stitchers to 
operate the machines in the Bos- 
ton store. When shoe manufac- 
turers came in and saw the ma- 
chines sewing shoes they decided 
that they must have them, and 
they bought. 

Mr. Nichols demonstrated the 
machine in several communities. 
In one place, shoemakers, both 
men and women, crowded around 
the machine. Mr. Nichols made 
it run splendidly. The next morn- 
ing a shoe binder sent word to 
him that she ''would like to hang 
him to a sour apple tree because 
his machine would take her work 



^% 



Shoe Making 



away from her." She did not 
foresee that the machine would 
save her labor and add to her 
wages. 

Mr. Nichols retired from bus- 
iness many years ago. On Feb. 
8, 1910, he passed his 87th birth- 
day pleasantly at his home in 
Lynn. He is a remarkably alert 
and active for a man of his years. 



30 



Old and New 



PART VIII 



When the Civil War broke out, 
the government at Washinerton 
was perplexed to provide shoes 
for the army. So many shoe- 
makers had left their benches to 
volunteer that there were not 
enough at home to make sufficient 
shoes for the army. Some shoe- 
makers left their unfinished shoes 
on the bench as Putnam left hJs 
plow in the furrow. Some manu- 
facturers rode around New Eng- 
land towns waving rolls of bills, 
and offering premiums to those 
shoemakers who would stay a 
while longer and finish up the 
shoes in the factory. But the shoe- 
makers marched off to war and 
there weren't enough left behind 
to make shoes for the soldiers, to 
say nothing of the other people 
of the country. Prices of shoes 
rose rapidly. 

Congress considered the matter 
of taking the tariff off boots and 
shoes, the tariff that Breed had 
won, so that large quantities of 
European shoes might be brought 
in to make up the threatened de- 
ficiency in the American supply. 
A crisis was at hand in the Amer- 
ican shoe manufacturing in- 
dustry. But, as has always hap- 
pened in this great nation, the 
right man with the right idea ap- 



31 



Shoe Making 



peared at the right moment. Col. 
Gordon McKay brought out his 
sewing machine, an invention so 
wonderful that one machine took 
the pjace of a whole company of 
shoemakers who had gone to war. 

This machine was invented by 
Lyman R. Blake, a young man of 
South Abington, a little town on 
the South Shore of Massachu- 
setts, where he was born August 
24, 1835. When a boy he began 
to work in a shoe factory during 
his school vacations. Before he 
was 21 years old he had saved 
$1400 from his wages, and this 
sum he invested in a shoe manu- 
facturing firm, of which he be- 
came a partner. 

To improve the business of his 
company he conceived the idea of 
making a machine that would sew 
the soles of shoes to the uppers, 
just as the Howe machine sewed 
the uppers together. His part- 
ners thought the idea somewhat 
dreamy, and insisted that if he 
worked on it, he should work on 
it only after fact<»ry hours, and 
should spend only his own money 
on it. 

Blake went ahead on these 
terms. Evenings, after finishing 
his day in the factory, he drew 
his designs and whittled out his 
model. He made a wooden ma- 
chine that looked to him as if it 
would sew shoes. He got the vil- 
lage wheelwright to make him 
moulds, and from them he had 
parts of a metal machine cast. 
He put the machine together and 
found that it would sew shoes. 



32 



Old and New 



But he realized that he had a 
machine that was too big for his 
business experience. His patent 
attorney introduced him to Col. 
Gordon McKay, a machinery man- 
ufacturer of experience and abil- 
ity. Col. McKay agreed to buy 
Blake's invention, giving him for 
it $8000 in cash and $62,000 in 
notes, to be paid from the profits 
of the company. 

Col. McKay started to develop 
the machine. Blake took his 
$8000 in cash and went to Staun- 
ton, Va., where he established a 
retail shoe store. He had hardly 
opened the store when the war 
broke out. He came North on the 
last train out, leaving his stock 
behind him. 

His return home was most time- 
ly. McKay was having a great 
deal of trouble with his machine, 
even though he had employed to 
perfect it the ablest mechanical 
engineers that money could se- 
cure. Blake was the sole master 
of the machine, however. He per- 
fected it, and made it sew shoes, 
and he taught others how to make 
it sew shoes. The machines were 
set up in shoe factories in New 
England towns to take the place 
of the shoemakers who had gone 
to war. Soon the shoemaker sol- 
diers at the front received the Mc- 
Kay shoes. They looked upon 
them in wonder, realizing that the 
shoes were not sewed by hand 
alone, and yet being unwilling to 
believe that it was possible to bui^d 
a machine that would sew shoes. 



Shoe Making 



PART IX 



For a score of years after it 
was proven practical and profit- 
able to sew shoes by machinery, 
it was necessary to last shoes by 
hand. Inventors burned barrels 
of midnight oil and promotors 
spent hundreds of thousands of 
dollars in endeavors to change 
the methods of lasting shoes from 
hand to machine, as Blake and 
McKay had changed the methods 
of sewing shoes. 

Manufacturers had McKay ma- 
chines and other machines in 
their factories, but their lasting 
rooms were occupied by hand 
workmen. The lasters were very 
strongly organized and their un- 
ions strictly regulated their occu- 
pation, limiting the number of ap- 
prentices and insisting upon and 
securing a very high wage. 

Indeed, the hand lasters were 
commonly looked upon as princes 
among shoemakers. Their wages 
ranged from $20 to $40 a week, 
and at times even $50. Most of 
the lasters were proud of their 
position in the trade even to vain 
boasting. 

It is tradition that, in a Lynn 
factory one day, a laster boast- 
ed: **No matter if the McKay ma- 
chine is a wonderful machine, no 
man can build a machine that will 



34 



Old and New 



take the joJb of the laster until he 
can make a machine that has 
fingers like a laster, and that's 
impossible. ' ' 

The boast fell upon the ears of 
J. W. Matzeliger, an operator of a 
McKay machine. This young man 
came to Lynn from Dutch Guiana, 
where he was born, the son of a 
Dutch engineer. He was educa- 
ted in the government machine 
shops. He came to this country 
when a young man and obtained 
a position in a Lynn shoe factory. 
His mechanically trained mind 
naturally bent itself upon ideas of 
improving the McKay machine. 
But when he heard the boast of 
the laster that no machine could 
possibly be built to last shoes, he 
thought of the possibility of 
building such a machine. 

He went to work secretly on his 
plan, for the shoemakers of his 
time were very strongly opposed 
to machinery. They thought it 
took work away, from men. The 
lasters, in particular, dreaded any 
attempts to build a machine to 
last shoes. Matzeliger established 
a little experimental shop over 
the West Lynn mission. There he 
toiled each night, after complet- 
ing his day's work in the shoe fac- 
tory. His machine became his 
idol. He spent all his money in 
building it. Yet he was so short 
of money that at times he picked 
up bits of wood and old cigar 
boxes from the street and used 
them in making his model. 

His first machine was a disap- 
pointment, to himself, and to 



35, 



Shoe Making 



those who looked at it. One in- 
ventor, who was also working on 
a lasting machine, offered him $50 
for his model. Matzeliger con- 
cluded that if the model was 
worth $50 to another person, it 
was worth more than that to him- 
self. So he kept it. He went to 
work to build another model. 

Unhappily for Matzeliger, his 
secret leaked out. His fellow 
workers laughed at him as a 
dreamer, and the lasters jeered at 
him. They did not foresee the 
splendid results his work would 
bring to them. 

Matzeliger 's second model was 
also a failure. But it was so 
much of an improvement over the 
first that a machinery man offered 
him $1500 for it. Again he de- 
cided that if the model was worth 
something to another person it 
was worth more to himself, and 
he kept it . He' set out to build a 
third machine. 

This third model was so satis- 
factory that Lynn men, who in- 
spected it, advanced Matzeliger 
money with which to build a 
fourth model . This model was the 
foundation of the present consoli- 
dated lasting machine. Matzeli- 
ger was exhausted by his efforts 
to build the machine, and was un- 
used to the New England climate. 
His health failed him in the midst 
of his work on the fourth model, 
and he died before he completed 
it. 

But others saw the merit of his 
invention and completed his mod- 
el. The machine was put upon 



36 



Old and New 



the market. It was set up in shoe 
factories, where it took the place 
of hand lasters. They struck 
against it. A bitter fight was car- 
ried on for a while. Some of the 
lasters said that the machine sung 
to them, as it worked, "I've got 
your job, I've got your job." 

The machine was one of the 
most remarkable shoe machines 
ever built. Some of its motions 
were exactly like those of the 
hand lasters. So Matzeliger's ma- 
chine proved vain the boast of the . 
laster that a machine could not 
be built to last shoes. 

The story of Matzeliger well il- 
lustrates how intricate are some 
of the workings of our complex 
civilization. Matzeliger came to 
this country, from distant Dutch 
Guiana, unused to our ways. Yet 
he built a machine that revolu- 
tionized the lasting of shoes, sub- 
stituting a machine for the hand 
methods that had been employed 
since the days of the first Ameri- 
can shoemakers. 

The lasting machine, like the 
McKay sewing machine, has im- 
proved product, decreased cost 
and decreased hours of labor and 
has multiplied production. The 
hand laster considered it a good 
day's work to last 60 pairs of 
shoes in the old . fashioned way. 
An operator of a lasting machine) 
today will do from 200 to 300 
pairs of shoes daily, according 
to the nature of his work, and '(^ 
some operators have lasted as i 
many as 700 pairs in ten hours. I 

The invention of Matzeliger was 



37 



Shoe Making 



greatly improved by Sherman 
Ladd. Of Mr. Ladd, it has been 
said that he ** couldn't invent a 
tooth-pick, but there never has 
been a machine which he couldn't 
improve upon." 
^ Sidney W. Winslow and George 
/ W. Brown made the invention of 
\ Matzeliger a commercial success. 
\Mr. Winslow began his career as 
San employe in his father's shoe 
factory in Salem, Mass. George 
W. Brown worked in a general 
store in Vermont in the days of 
his youth, was in the employ of 
some Western railroads, and then 
became interested in the sewing 
machine business. Mr. Brown and 
Mr. Winslow made their company 
, the Consolidated Lasting Ma- 
\ chine Co., the strongest shoe ma- 
\chinery company in the world. 
^Eventually, they formed the 
United Shoe Machinery Co. by 
consolidating important machi- 
nery companies with the Consoli- 
dated Co. 



38 




A MODERN SHOEMAKER. 
Operating the Welt Sewing Machine at a speed of 500 stitches a minute. 



Old and New 



PART X 



Methods of making shoes have 
been revolutionized by American 
shoemakers in the past 275 years. 
Changes have been made slowly. 
One generation improving upon 
the methods of its predecessors, 
until the sum total of the changes 
was a revolution of the industry 
from a manual to a mechanic in- 
dustry. 

Shoes of colonial days were 
commonly sewed by hand. Heavy 
shoes were welt sewed, and light 
shoes were turn made. Some 
heavy boots were copper nailed. 

One of the first improvements 
in making shoes came from the 
use of the shoe peg. The histori- 
cal sketch of the shoe industry, 
published in the U. S. census re- 
ports for 1900 is authority for the 
statement that the shoe peg was 
invented in 1815. The first pegs 
were whittled out by hand. The 
pegs, when properly driven, firm- 
ly fastened the sole to the uppers. 

The first machine in the shoe 
industry appears to have been a 
shoe pegging machine. It was in- 
vented by Samuel Preston, a 
Danvers, Mass., shoe manufactur- 
er, in 1833. A pair of shoes pegg- 
ed on it is preserved in the Essex 
Institute, in Salem. 

The pegging machine, however. 



39 

• 



Shoe Making 



did not come into successful use 
until about 1859, when a machine 
invented in 1851, by A. C. Galla- 
hue, was perfected. This machine 
really began the revolution of 
the shoe industry, from a manual 
to a mechanical industry. The Mc- 
Kay machine, which came soon 
after it, is given the credit of re- 
volutionizing the industry. 

The first machine in successful 
practical use in the shoe industry 
was the rolling machine. It is a 
simple machine, consisting of two 
iron rollers. A shoemaker passed 
a pairof soles through the rollers 
and so compressed the leather. By 
using the rolling machine, the 
shoemaker saved himself half an 
hour labor of pounding a pair of 
soles on a lap stone with a flat 
face hammer. 

The McKay machine and the 
pegging machine were rapidly 
adopted by shoe manufacturers. 
But they did not put an end to 
the occupation of hand shoemak- 
ing. The McKay shoes and the 
pegged shoes, too, were stiff. Their 
soles were like a board. People 
were accustomed to the flexible 
hand sewed shoes, and those per- 
sons who could afford it contin- 
ued to buy hand sewed shoes 
made by custom shoemakers. 

In 1862 August Destroy secured 
patents on a welt sewing ma- 
chine. He assigned his patents 
to James Hanan, of Hanan & Son, 
shoe manufacturers, of Brooklyn. 
Mr. Hanan interested Charles Good- 
year, an expert machinist, in the 
machine. Mr. Goodyear devel- 

40 



Old and New 



oped it, and the machine took his 
name, even as the invention of 
Blake took the name of McKay. 

The welt sewing machine did 
not come into use until about 
1876, however. From that time 
the industry of making shoes by 
hand began to wane rapidly. The 
machine accurately imitated hand 
methods of making shoes and 
sewed soles to uppers with stitch- 
es almost as fine as could the 
skilled hand shoemakers. 

There have been invented, de- 
veloped and brought into use in 
the shoe industry a thousand and 
one machines besides these im- 
portant and successful ones. All 
of them have contributed in a 
greater or less extent to the saving 
of time and increasing the wages 
of the shoemaker and to the im- 
provement of product and de- 
crease of price of product. 

These many machines, how- 
ever, would have been of small 
value had they not been harnessed 
to the giant powers, steam and 
electricity. The first machines; 
were driven by hand power or 
foot power. Some enterprising 
shoe manufacturer adopted the 
horse mill that was in common 
use in the textile factories. In 
about 1855 the steam engine was 
substituted for the horse mill and 
along in 1890, the electric motorij 
began to take the place of the, 
steam engine. ' 

William F. Trowbridge, an en- 
terprising shoe manufacturer of 
Feltonville, now Trowbridge, 
Mass., employed three stout Irish- 



41 



Shoe Making 



men to turn over the main power 
wheel in his factory. Later, he 
employed his horse, ''Old Gener- 
al." In 1855, Mr. Trowbridge had 
a steam engine set up in his fac- 
tory. It was the first used in the 
shoemaking industry. 

One man performed the entire \ 
process of making shoes in coloni- j 
al times. He did all his work with 
his own hands. Today, in some | 
shops, a single shoe passes j 
through the hands of 100 em- i 
ployees, 90 of whom operate ma- | 
chines. A colonial shoemaker \ 
spent a day, more or less making j 
a pair of shoes. In one modem 1 
factory, a pair of fine shoes has 
been made in 15 minutes. 

There are few men today who 
can make a shoe, performing the 
entire operation. But there are 
some men who have built up or- 
ganized establishments that will 
make twenty thousand pairs of shoes 
in a day. 



42 



Old and New 



PART XI 



American tanners make the 
best leather in the world. The 
superior quality of their product 
helps American shoemakers to 
make the best of shoes. 

The American leather manu- 
facturing industry has been 
built up slowly from small be- 
ginnings, as has the American 
shoe manufacturing industry. 
The first leather was brought 
here from England. The colo- 
nists often used deer skins, tanned 
by the Indians. Many a colonist 
was his own tanner. 

Francis Ingalls, a tanner of Lin- 
colnshire, England, settled in 
Lynn in 1629. Philemon Dicker- 
son, a tanner, and servant of Ben- 
jamin Cooper of Branton, Eng- 
land passed his examination to 
come to this country May 10, 
1637. He settled in Salem, and, in 
1639, he was granted land on 
which to make tan pit§ and to 
dress hides and goat skins. The 
tanning industry was carried on 
by the Dutch ir». New York, the 
Quakers in Pennsylvania and the 
Cavaliers in the South. 

In 1800, William Rose, a tan- 
ner near Blackfriar's Bridge, 
London, came to Lynn. He was 
induced to come here by Ebencr 
zer Breed, the same man who had 



43 



^ 

Shoe Making 



secured from Congress the pas- 
sage of the law which put a pro- 
tective tariff on American shoes. 
Rose practiced the art of mak- 
ing morocco leather, an art which 
the English had learned from the 
Spaniards and the Spaniards 
from the Moors. 

Rose was called ''the father of 
the American morocco manufac- 
turing industry." He was a good 
tanner but was unfortunate in be- 
ing intemperate in speech, act 
and appetite. He threw a tax col- 
lector into a river who demanded 
payment of a bill of him one day. 

Shortly before the Civil War, 
machinery was introduced into 
the leather making industry. At 
first the hand workmen thought it 
impossible to use machinery in 
making leather. But one by one 
the various labor saving machines 
were introduced and perfected, 
until today machinery is used in 
place of hand labor in all branches 
of leather making. Of course, 
the machinery has saved time, 
money and labor. 

In 1884, a tanner asked August 
Schultz if he couldn't make leath- 
er that would resist the action of 
perspiration of the feet better 
than did the t^en common alum 
tanned kid leather. Schultz was 
at the time a chemist for a New 
York City house. He was using 
chrome mordant in the process of 
dyeing wool. He substituted 
chrome for alum in tanning skins. 
But practical tanners laughed at 
his leather. It was stiff and hard. 



44 



Old and New 



and robin's egg in color. How- 
ever, Robert Foederer, a morocco 
manufacturer of Philadelphia, had 
faith in the process. He began to 
experiment with it. After spend- 
ing a great deal of time and 
money, he learned to fat liquor 
his chrome tanned leather. He 
dressed it with an emulsion of 
soap and oil, while it was drying. 
The chrome made a leather im- 
pervious to water, that resisted 
the action of perspiration from 
the feet, and the fat liquor made 
it soft and pliable. 

Foederer called his leather Vici 
kid, taking his trade mark from 
Caesar's famous message. Shoe 
manufacturers pronounced this 
chrome tanned leather the best 
made. Consequently, rival tan- 
ners undertook to make leather 
by the chrome process. The own- 
ers of the Schultz patents brought 
suits against many tanners for 
infringement on their patent. Af- 
ter costly suits, it was learned 
that Prof. Knapp, a German 
chemist, had used the chrome 
process for tanning leather in 
1850. The suits were comprom- 
ised. The chrome process has 
come into general use for the 
manufacturers of all kinds of 
leather. It has given American 
tanners leadership in the leather 
making industry. 

American tanners now tan 
about 20,000,000 hides and 100,- 
000,000 skins annually. Their raw 
material, including their tanning 
agents, costs them about $200,- 



45» 



Shoe Making 



000,000 annually. They import 
more than $50,000,000 worth of 
skins annually, fetching them 
from the interior* of Africa, the 
hills of India, and from China, 
Siberia, Australia, and South 
American countries. 

American tanners now make 
about $300,000,000- worth of 
leather annually, most of which is 
used for boots and shoes. A few 
million dollars' worth is used for 
upholstering automobiles and 
furniture, for binding books, for 
belting on machinery, for trunks, 
bags and valises, card cases and 
pocket books and for novelties. 



46 



Old and New 



PART XII 



The organization of the modern 
factory system makes an interesting 
chapter of the story of the shoe in- 
dustry. It shows how individual 
enterprise has given place to co-op- 
erative effort, how the jack of all 
trades has become a specialist, and 
how habits and opinions of men 
have changed as new and better con- 
ditions have been created. 

An early shoemaker labored alone, 
upon his own responsibility. He 
bought his leather himself, made 
shoes completely, and sold his pro- 
duct to his customer personally. He 
was a unit in an individual system 
of production. The shoemaker of 
today is a unit in a collective sys- 
tem. 

After the Eevolution, the "bag 
boss'^ appeared. He made shoes in 
his own little shop, packed them into 
a bag, threw the bag over his shoul- 
der and tramped from house to 
house, and from town to town, sell- 
ing shoes from door to door. Some 
of the bag bosses walked to Boston, 
or other large cities, and sold their 
shoes to wholesalers and retailers. 

Ambitiouis shoemakers employed 
other shoemakers to work for them. 
They became manufacturers or em- 
ployers. The shoemakers, whom 
they employed, became employees. 
This was the beginning of the di- 



47i 



Shoe Making 



vision between capital and labor, in 
the shoe trade. 

Some shrewd shoemakers observed 
that one man could perform some 
part of shoemaking better than an- 
other. For instance, one man ex- 
celled in cutting and fitting boot 
tops, while another excelled in sew- 
ing on soles and finishing them. So 
teams of workers were formed. One 
man gave all his time to cutting and 
fitting uppers and the other to sew- 
ing on soles and finishing them. 
Teams of turn workers were also 
formed. 

The manufacturers made a spe- 
cialty of buying material for their 
employees to make up into shoes and 
of selling the product of their em- 
ployees. As they prospered, they 
hired more shoemakers. A few 
manufacturers built factories to ac- 
commodate their workmen. Other 
manufacturers built factories which 
were practically store houses for 
raw material and finished product. 
Shoemakers took home material for 
a week^s work from the factory, and 
to make the shoes in the little shop 
at home. 

1 Along in 1850, manufacturers be- 
gan to equip their factories with 
machinery, and to drive the machin- 
ery by steam power. They called 
shoemakers from their little shops 
at home to the shoe factories of the 
shoe centers to operate the ma- 
chines. Then it became necessary 
to organize the shoemakers into shop 
crews, and to establish factory dis- 
cipline. 

This was a huge task. The typi- 
cal shoemaker had long been his own 



48 



Old and New 



boss. He worked in his little shop at 
home when, and how, he pleased. 
He looked upon the factory rules, 
which required him to work from 7 
o^clock in the morning to 6 at night 
as prison rules, and he considered 
the shriek of the factory whistle 
an order of a stern Czar whom he 
must obey. He believed obedience 
to the orders of the foreman a sur- 
render of his personal rights and 
liberties, and he was certain that 
machinery would — labor saving ma- 
chinery — deprive him of his occu- 
pation and reduce him to slavery and 
poverty. Indeed, it was a common 
practice for the old fashioned shoe- 
makers to resist the factory system, 
and they aso fought against abor 
saving machinery by striking against 
its introduction, or, by attempting 
the crafty trick of causing the ma- 
chine to do work much poorer than 
could be done by hand. 

One machine followed another un- 
til practically every part of the pro- 
qess of making shoes has become a 
mechanical work, and not manual. 
As the machines appeared, shoe- 
makers undertook to operate them. 
Each shoemaker undertook to run 
one machine only. So the specialist 
in the shoemaking, the man who op- 
erates one machine alone, has taken 
the place of the man who performed 
by hand the entire process of mak- 
ing a shoe. Yet each specialist has 
to work in harmony with his neigh- 
bor so that the factory system may 
run smoothly. 

The assembling of shoemakers in- 
to factories called for men to organ- 
ize and train them, just as the as- 



49, 



Shoe Making 



sembling of a group of men in an 
army for warfare, in the early state 
of society, called for leaders to form 
and drill them. Superintendents and 
foremen, or overseers of depart- 
ments, appeared in the factories. 
There is today one foreman, or su- 
perintendent to each group of 50 
shoemakers for the entire shoe in- 
dustry. Some of the large shoe 
firms employ 100 superintendents 
and foremen in their factories. 

The business, as well as the labor, 
of manufacturing shoes, has been 
sub-divided, and each division has 
come into the charge of a specialist. 
The large shoe manufacturing firms 
of today have one man who is a spe- 
cialist in leather buying, another one 
who is a specialist in securing lasts 
and patterns, another man in charge 
of buying miscellaneous supplies, a 
manager of the sales department, an 
executive officer sometimes called a 
manager of the factory, or superin- 
tendent, still another man in charge 
of the finance, advertising, statistics, 
and even of the foreign sales depart- 
ment. 

The little factories in which one 
man labored, a ruler of all that he 
surveyed; have grown into large es- 
tablishments, in which are employed 
a thousand and more men daily, 
and in which are made shoes to the 
quantity of 10,000 pairs daily, and 
even more. The larg- shoe man- 
ufacturing companies of the coun- 
try today operate groups of factories 
and make 25,000 pairs of shoes 
daily and even more. The annual 
daily product of some of the big 
factories exceeds the entire product 



50 




THE PULLING OVER MACHINE 
Whose steel fingers have taken the place of shoemakers' hands. 



Old and New 



of all the shoemakers in the country 
in colonial times. 

The introduction and use of shoe 
machinery, and the development of 
the factory system, led to increase 
in wages, shortening of hours of la- 
bor, and improvement of product. 
Wages rose from the $5 and $6 
level of the days of hand shoemak- 
ing to $8, $10, $12 and $15 a week, 
and even higher, for some shoemak- 
ers of today earn $1000 a year in 
wages. Hours of labor have been 
shortened from twelve to ten, and 
from ten to nine, and now shoe- 
makers are seeking the eight hour 
day and in a few cases they have 
gained it. Increased wages and 
shortening of hours have, of course, 
enabled shoemakers to adopt and en- 
joy higher standards of living than 
did their predecessors. 



Shoe Making 



PART XIII 



Further organization of the boot 
and shoe industry has resulted in 
the building up of large corpora- 
tions, the forming of strong asso- 
ciations of manufacturers and shoe- 
makers, and the centralizing of the 
industry in certain communities. 

Some large shoe firms have a 
capital of $1,000,000 and more and 
manufacture and distribute $10,- 
000,000 worth and more shoes an- 
nually. One manufacturing firm 
has 700 retail agencies for the dis- 
tribution of its shoes in this coun- 
try, and another has circled the 
world with a chain of shoe stores. 

New England, the birthplace of 
the shoe industry, is still the dom- 
inating factor in the shoe manufac- 
turing business of the nation. It 
makes more than half of the shoes 
that are produced in this country 
each year. 

It sends its shoes to all parts of 
this country, and to every foreign 
country in which white men have 
settled. It is a leader in the building 
up of America's foreign trade of 
more than $10,000,000 annually. 

Boston is the great shoe and leath- 
er market of the world. It is the 
central point for shoe buyers as 
well as those who have shoes to sell. 

Every live and progressive buy- 
er of shoes in the country visits Bos- 



52 



Old and New 



ton market twice a year, once in 
January and again in July, when 
samples of new shoes for coming 
seasons are shown. Some buyers 
visit Boston once a month. 

The New England Shoe & Leather 
association is the largest organiza- 
tion in the world devoted to the ad- 
vancement of the welfare of the 
shoe and leather and allied trades. 
Its membership is made up of a 
large number of manufacturers of 
New England. It represents their 
crystallized sentiment. 

The Boston Boot & Shoe club is 
the leading social organization of 
men of the shoe trade. In Boston 
fashion, it dines monthly and lis- 
tens to speeches by distinguished 
men, who discuss topics of close in- 
terest to the shoe trade. It pro- 
motes the social graces, and brings 
into pleasant companionship men 
who may be rivals in business, or 
even strangers to each other, though 
engaged in the same lines of busi- 



There is also a large and influen- 
tial organization of shoe makers, the 
Boot & Shoe Workers' Union. John 
F. Tobin is its president' and it has 
a membership of 30,000. It regu- 
lates conditions of employment of 
shoemakers. It makes contracts 
with manufacturers fixing the hours 
of labor and the wages to be paid, 
and providing for the arbitration of 
any disputes that may arise between 
manufacturers and its members. 
There are several other organizations 
of shoe makers, and, also, some small 
but excellent associations of superin- 
tendents and foremen. 



53 



Shoe Making 



A new movement is being organ- 
ized. Its purpose is to build up a 
Greater New England. Its leaders 
are Charles C. Hoyt, President of the 
New England Shoe & Leather asso- 
ciation, Alfred W. Donovan, Presi- 
dent of the Boston Boot & Shoe 
club, and Thomas F. .Anderson, 
who is Secretary of both organiza- 
tions. There has rallied to the ad- 
vancement of this movement the 
leading organizations of the shoe 
and leather trade in Boston and in 
nearby cities, and, also, a large num- 
ber of men of the shoe, leather and 
allied trades. These, Greater New 
Englanders believe in the mainten- 
ance and advancement of New Eng- 
land's traditional supremacy in shoe 
manufacturing in the past and in 
the development of New England 
character in shoe making in the fu- 
ture, so that shoes "Made in New 
England'^ shall be known as the best 
in the world, and shall be bought as 
the best by the entire world. 

It is a huge task to carry on this 
Greater New England movement. 
It will introduce, if it is carried out, 
a new era in the bhoe manufacturing 
industry. It promises to lead to a 
volume of business now undreamed 
of, and not methods and machinery 
and to relations between employers 
and employees, and to a general ad- 
vancement of the industry to a plane 
as elevated above the plane of the 
industry today, as the plane of the 
industry of today is above that of 
the periods told about in this history. 



54 



Old and New 



PART XIV 



The modern development of shoe 
machinery is along new lines, and it 
is not yet entirely clear to what fu- 
ture it will lead. In 1899, progress 
in modern business organization, as 
well as in shoe machinery, led to the 
establishment of the United Shoe Ma- 
chinery Co., a corporation made up 
by the consolidation of the several 
important shoe machinery companies, 
the Goodyear Sewing Machine Co., 
the McKay Shoe Machine Co., and 
the Consolidated Lasting Machine 
Co. and their auxiliary companies. 
These concerns had possession of the 
important machines used in the man- 
ufacture of shoes, and the organiza- 
tion of the United Shoe Machinery 
Co. brought them together in a sys- 
tem. 

The development of this system 
has brought up some new conditions. 
Relations between the machinery 
company and shoe manufacturers 
are unique. Similar relations are 
found in no other industry, neither 
at the present time nor in familiar 
history. So these new conditions 
and relations, must be considered 
from the view point of the twentieth 
century that seeks what is best for 
the world, not from the viewpoint of 
the past that says this was best and 
looks upon that best as a standard 
for all time. 

55* 



Shoe Making 



At first, shoe manufacturers re- 
sented the new system of shoe ma- 
chinery, and found much fault with 
it. But, now, a great number of 
shoe manufacturers regard the 
United Shoe Machinery Co. as a 
partner in their business, and have 
come to believe that there is estab- 
lished, not a corporation control of 
the shoe machinery business, but a 
new form of co-operation in busi- 
ness. Whatever the new state of 
affairs may be, it is certainly con- 
tributing much to the welfare of all 
concerned, to the general public as 
well as to manufacturers of shoes, 
and the shoe machinery company. 

Methods employed under the new 
system of handling shoe machinery 
are new. The U. S. M. Co. equips 
shoe factories, in this country and 
abroad, dealing with the smallest 
shops that employ only ten or twelve 
as well as the biggest concerns that 
employ thousands of persons and 
that make from 10,000 to 30,000 
pairs of shoes, and even more, daily. 
All manufacturers, large or small, 
are dealt with upon the same terms, 
and with the same courtesy. There 
is no special rate for big fellows, nor 
any neglect of small fellows. The 
rebating idea is unknown to the shoe 
machinery industry. So the new 
system of handling shoe machinery 
provides for fair play. 

The United Shoe Machinery Com- 
pany provides shqe manufacturers 
with "everything from a tack to a 
whole factory equipment. '^ Not only 
does it provide anything of a me- 
chanical nature, which may be used 
in shoe manufacturing, but it also 



56 



Old and New 



teaches manufacturers, or their em- 
ployees, how to get the best possible 
results from the things which they 
use. It has a large corps of experts 
who go among the factories keeping 
machines in repair, and making sug- 
gestions to operators for the improve- 
ment of their product. Thereby, im- 
provement in workmanship and in 
product is encouraged, and the shoe- 
makers, as well as the shoe manu- 
facturers, are benefitted, and the peo- 
ple get better shoes. So here is a 
practical education as a feature of 
the new system. 

Machinery set up in shoe factor- 
ies by the Company is not sold out- 
right, but is leased, on the royalty 
system. The manufacturer pays so 
much per pair for the use of the ma- 
chine in making shoes. Because of 
this arrangement, the manufacturer 
does not have to tie up his capital m 
machinery, but keeps it actively em- 
ployed in his manufacturing busi- 
ness. He pays for his machinery 
only as he uses it. As the income of 
the Company depends upon the 
number of shoes made upon its ma- 
chines, it is the plain duty of the 
Company to keep its machines m the 
best possible condition, and to have 
the best shoes made on them that 
can be produced. This new feature 
of the new system of handling ma- 
chinery makes the Company some- 
thing like a public service corpora- 
tion. ^ ^, . 
The royalty system for the use ol 
new shoe machinery corresponds in 
certain respects to the railroad sys- 
tem. The railroad companies pro- 
vide the cars, and people pay for 



Shoe Making 



the use of them as they ride upon 
them. A person who wishes to make 
a journey does not have to build or 
buy a railroad line and equip it. He 
merely pays for the use of such fa- 
cilities as the railroad company pro- 
vides. Likewise, a shoe manufac- 
turer does not have to build or buy 
shoe machinery. He merely pays for 
machinery as he uses it. 

The new systems of doing busi- 
ness have at times been vigorously 
attacked. This is natural, for it is 
not yet clear in the public mind 
where injurious competition leaves 
off and where beneficial co-operation 
begins. But it is apparent that the 
new system of handling shoe ma- 
chinery has led to a great amount of 
good. It appears a new form of co- 
operation which benefits all persons 
who come into contact with it. 

As to the benefits that have come 
from the new system of handling 
machinery, it may be stated that the 
records show that the United Shoe 
Machinery Company has paid good 
returns to investors, thereby profit- 
ing and encouraging capital, and 
that it has increased the wages of its 
employees and shortened the hours 
of labor, thereby profiting and en- 
couraging labor. 

It has benefitted the shoe trade, 
and, also, the public, for shoe manu- 
facturers are making more shoes and 
better shoes, and consequently they 
have a larger business and the peo- 
ple have more shoes and better shoes. 

From 1890 (the year after the or- 
ganization of the U. S. M. Co.) to 
1900, the product of American shoe 
manufacturers increased from $220,- 



58 



Old and New 



000,000 to $258,000,000, a gain of 
17 per cent, and from 1900 to 1905, 
it increased from $258,000,000 to 
$320,000,000, a gain of 23 per cent. 
Statistics show that people have 
more shoes and better shoes today 
than ever before. This feature of 
improvement in the shoe business is 
discussed in other chapters. 

Furthermore, the development of 
shoe machinery has enabled Ameri- 
can shoe manufacturers to gain the 
foremost position among the nations 
of the world in the exporting of 
shoes. During ten years, the ex- 
ports of American shoes has in- 
creased from $1,000,000 to $11,- 
000,000. Superiority of American 
machinery has undoubtedly contrib- 
uted in a large measure to the growth 
of the export trade. 

The true worth of an industrial 
corporation, as well as of a man, is 
tested in its own home. The United 
Shoe Machinery Company is held in 
high esteem in Beverly, the city in 
which its factory is located, and in 
which its president, Sidney W. Wins- 
low, makes his home. It is his na- 
tive place. The company is consid- 
ered a public benefactor, not alone 
because it employs 5,000 men, and 
pays them good wages (the average 
wages in Beverly are the highest in 
the state of Massachusetts) but be- 
cause it is developing twentieth cen- 
tury ideals in industry. 

Its buildings are of concrete, that 
wont burn down. So insurance 
costs, an economic waste, are saved. 
The buildings have the best heating, 
lighting, ventilating and sanitary 
equipment, so the health of employ- 



Shoe Making 



ees is safe-guarded. A big restau- 
rant provides employees with good 
dinners at cost. It is based on the 
theory that the man who eats well 
works well. About the factories are 
lawns and gardens, they being main- 
tained on the theory that the man 
who looks out upon a pleasant view 
cheers up, and does better work 
than the man who might look out 
upon rough or unpleasant things, 
such as a factory dump. A factory 
farm provides fresh vegetables for 
the factory restaurant, and, also, pro- 
vides opportunity for employees to 
raise vegetables for their own homes, 
or to secure shrubs and flowers for 
their homes. 

The employees have organized the 
United Shoe Machinery Athletic club. 
It has a gun club, baseball, soccer 
football, motor boat and tennis di- 
visions. To encourage out of door 
sports the Company has given a 
large athletic field, and a substan- 
tial club house, with locker rooms, 
baths, bowling alleys, billiard room, 
reading room, and a large hall for 
dances, entertainments and other 
gatherings. The gift of the club 
house was made with the recommen- 
dation that employees play hard and 
earnestly, and enjoy well their leis- 
ure, for men who do so get the best 
results in the shop, the home, and 
wherever else life takes them. 

The employees have an association 
that pays benefits in case of sick- 
ness, accident or death. Many employ- 
ees have taken policies from the in- 
surance department of Massachusetts 
savings banks. 

So, here in this Beverly factory, 



60 



Old and New 



there is actively going on the work 
of building up a newer and higher 
civilization for this twentieth cen- 
tury. Wages have been increased 
and hours of labor shortened, and 
men have been in many ways en- 
couraged to excel in their work, and 
to create new and better ways of do- 
ing work. The health of the body 
and mind is protected, and men are 
encouraged to preserve and increase 
their physical strength through games 
of the athletic field and club house, 
and to increase the capacity of their 
minds by study of machinery, in the 
school, or in the inventive depart 
ment. 

These things tend to make the up- 
building of a higher civilization, and 
to the wiping out of those great 
evils of poverty and sickness, from 
which the world has suffered so long 
that it thinks them necessary evils. 
Furthermore these, and the protec- 
tion of the benefit association and of 
the savings bank insurance, ward off 
the want and despair that often 
comes among families of workmen 
when sickness, or death, or old age, 
overtakes the bread winner. 

These conditions seem to show 
that the new system of handling ma- 
chinery which is practised by the 
U. S. M. Co. is one of the practical 
methods of co-operation that is well 
worked out, and that is adding to the 
real prosperity of the people who 
come into contact with it. 



6u 



Shoe Making 



PART XV 



It was a century ago, a com- 
mon practice to ''send out" shoes 
to be made up. Manufacturers 
had factories in the large towns, 
or shoe centres. These factories 
were really warehouses. In them, 
the manufacturer kept his raw 
material and his finished shoes. 
Each week, he distributed 
"stock" or leather and supplies, 
to his shoemakers, and he re- 
ceived from them the shoes which 
they had made during the week, 
in their little shops at home. 

Shoemakers who lived near the 
factories came to them, wheeling 
their shoes in a barrow, or fetch- 
ing them in a bag, or basket. 
Some sent express wagons on 
regular weekly trips among shoe- 
makers who lived distant from 
the factory, even to New Hamp- 
shire towns. The "shoe freight- 
ers," as they were called, took 
a week for making a round trip 
between New Hampshire towns 
and Lynn. 

Enterprising shoemakers con- 
tinued to do business individual- 
ly, even after the factory system 
was introduced. One young man, 
Putnam by name, was told by 
his employer, a Danvers shoe 
manufacturer, that there was no 
work for him, because business 



62 




COL. GORDON R. McKAY 
Developer of McKay Machine and of royalty system. 



"^ '^^QB^ «HP^ 




J. W. MATZELIGER 
Inventor of the Lasting Machine. 



Old and New 



was bad. Putnam secured leather 
and supplies upon credit, from 
his employer. He took them 
home and made them into shoes. 
He packed the shoes in a saddle 
bag, borrowed his father's horse, 
and rode from Danvers to Bos- 
ton and there sold his shoes. 
His venture was the beginning 
of a large shoe business. 

Philip Lefavor related that he 
made shoes in Marblehead in 
about 1840. He worked from sun 
rise to sun set, four days a week, 
and Friday, he worked all day 
and all night. At sun rise Satur- 
day morning, without stopping 
for sleep, he started to walk to 
Boston, a distance of 15 miles* 
with his shoes in a bag on his 
shoulder. In Boston, he sold his 
shoes, and bought fresh stock, 
and then he walked back home, 
arriving late Saturday afternoon. 
Mr. Lefavor lived four score 
years. He said that he never felt 
any ill effects from his strenuous 
work. 

In days before the railroads, 
shoes were sent from Boston, the 
great shoe market of the coun- 
try, to the South in coasting 
schooners. Shoes for St. Louis 
were sent to New Orleans in 
schooners, and thence up the 
Mississippi River in flat boats. 
During the war of 1812, some 
Beverly shoemakers secretly load- 
ed a schooner hidden in the Es- 
sex River. They ran the British 
blockade, and they sold their 
shoes at a handsome profit in the 
South. Some wealthy shoe manu- 



63 



Shoe Making 



facturers owned coasting schoon- 
ers. 

When John B. Alley was given 
his freedom, after serving his ap- 
prenticeship in a Lynn factory, 
he made up a lot of shoes, loaded 
them into a wagon and set out 
overland for St. Louis to sell 
them. His journey was not finan- 
cially profitable. But he learned 
the need of transportation, and 
he made a fortune in Western 
railroads. He was a member of 
Congress. 

Shoes were often sent from 
some New England towns to Bos- 
ton market in ox carts. Some old 
men of the trade remember the 
ox carts laden with shoes. When 
prosperous manufacturers were 
first able to buy and keep wag- 
ons, they did an express business. 
They carried shoes to Boston for 
less fortunate manufacturers, at 
so much per case. They also took 
passengers, upon payment of 
fares . 

Today, shoes from Boston, and 
cities and towns near Boston, 
leave the factory at night and 
are delivered in the New York 
market the next morning, in Chi- 
cago the next day, and in San 
Francisco within a week. Shoes 
are sent from Boston to London, 
in a week, at a cost of a nickel a 
pair. 



64 



Old and New 



PART XVI 

1 



Styles in footwear have changed 
as have people, during three cen- 
turies of American life. 

Puritans of early New England 
wore knee trousers, woolen stock- 
ings and broad, low cut, buckle shoes, 
with square toes. In English poli- 
tical life, the Puritans were some- 
times called "square toes.'' Broad 
toes and narrow toes and long toes 
and short toes have alternated in 
the fashions of years and centuries. 

Buckled shoes were common in 
the colonies, as well as in England. 
During the reign of Charles II, 
when gaudy apparel was fashion- 
able, shoe buckles were large in 
size, and were made of pewter, sil- 
ver and even of gold. The fashion 
of buckled shoes for men vanished 
long ago. But low cut shoes for 
women are frequently adorned with 
buckles, and party slippers some- 
times have elaborate buckles of bril- 
liants, and even of sterling silver 
and gold. Some buckles of the co- 
lonial period were so valuable that 
they were handed down as family 
heirlooms, and a few of them are 
possessed in old families today. 

Boots were the typical footwear of 
the American pioneer. The settler 
wore heavy boots of cow hide 
leather when he plunged into the 
wilderness, when he cut lumber for 



6t 



his home, when he plowed the fields, 
and when he harvested his crops. 
These old fashioned leg boots of 
cow hide leather were the sturdiest 
boots that ever were made. They 
were worn for years, and, in some 
cases, they were actually handed 
down from father to son. A few 
old gentlemen of today have a strong 
preference for leg boots in the win- 
ter time. They consider them sov- 
ereign protection for the health be- 
cause they keep warm the feet, an- 
kles and legs. 

These old fashioned boots had legs 
of bark tanned cow hide, that were 
sewn together by skillful shoemak- 
ers, and soles of best oak tanned 
leather, that were fastened on with 
copper nails or pegs. Often a nail 
or a peg stuck up in the sole of the 
shoe, but that was a small matter, 
easily rubbed away by the rasp that 
the shoe man always kept handy. 
The shoes were apt to shrink, if 
they got very wet, so the hardy 
wearer of them usually kept a boot 
jack handy, to serve as an anchor 
in the struggle to pull them off. 

He also kept close by a piece of 
mutton tallow, or some woodchuck'a 
oil, or other grease, with which he 
dressed the leather, after it dried, 
and thereby made the boots soft and 
pliable enough to put on again. 

Women's dress shoes have always 
been light in weight and fine in ap- 
pearance. Fabric shoes, which are 
fashionable at the present time, were 
prized by belles of colonial times, 
and so were high heels, pointed toes, 
and short foreparts and high arches, 
that make the feet look small, and 



66 



Old and New 



please the eye of vanity, but that in- 
jure the health, the doctors say. The 
fine dress shoes, of silk and satin, 
that were worn by fashionable wo- 
men of colonial society, were im- 
ported from London and Paris. A 
few were made in New England. 
The best colonial shoes, judging 
from the appearance of a few of 
them that are preserved in muse- 
ums, were very poor shoes in com- 
parison with shoes of today. 

For many years, serge Congress 
shoes were in fashion among wo- 
men. Some old folks of today re- 
member them. They had broad, 
square toes, and when they fitted 
well, they were comfortable, though 
they did not afford as good protec- 
tion to the foot as do leather shoes. 
Some shoe manufacturers were very 
glad to make serge shoes, because 
they believed that there weren't 
hides enough in the world to make 
leather shoes for everybody. 

Among many people of old New 
England, it was a custom to dress 
shoes by greasing them with mutton 
tallow every Sunday morning, just 
as it was a practice among them to 
take a bath every Saturday night. 
The grease softened the leather, and 
gave it an oily gloss that lasted un- 
til the dust fell on it. It preserved 
the leather, however, and it was, 
without doubt, much better for the 
shoe than some of the acid dressings 
that are used today. 

Shoe blacking, which was intro- 
duced into this country from Eng- 
land, was not much used until re- 
cent years. Though school teachers 
in days of old sometimes told the 



6> 



Shoe Making 



rising generation the rewards that 
came from well shined shoes, 
from well washed faces and well 
combed hair, yet the practice of 
shining shoes every day did not 
flourish. It didn't flourish even 
when shoe retailers, competing for 
trade, gave a box of blacking with 
each pair of shoes that they sold. 

Invention came to the aid of men 
whose backs ached at the mere 
thought of shining their shoes. In- 
genious tanners varnished and ja- 
panned on leather a shine that 
stayed on, and called the leather 
patent leather. A person puts on 
a pair of shoes of this leather and 
they stay bright and shiny as long 
as they are worn. Other persons 
wear shoes of dull or glazed leather, 
and have them frequently shined in 
a boot black ^^parlor," commonly 
managed by a Greek or an Italian. 
A nickel a shine doesn't seem much 
to the prosperous American, but 
these nickels have totalled to the 
great sum of $10,000,000 which 
amount the American people spend 
annually for having their shoes 
shined. 

Laces are the oldest form of shoe 
fastenings. They are centuries old- 
er than buckles. They were used 
even before the time of Moses. In 
early New England, laces were 
sometimes used in place of buckles 
for fastening shoes. Buttons are, 
comparatively speaking, a modem 
invention. When they were first 
used on shoes is not known. But 
some old persons remember when 
they bought shoes at the, store, and 



68 



Old and New 



the dealer gave them some buttons, 
which they took home and sewed on. 

The great desire of shoe manufac- 
turers of today is to make a shoe 
that will automatically fasten onto 
the foot the moment it is put on. 
The nearest that the manufacturers 
have got to it is the pump, the low 
cut shoe that is built to fit the foot 
snugly and cling to it. But it has 
a fault of slipping off, after it is 
worn and stretched. The old fash- 
ioned Congress boots clung to the 
foot, but the goring stretched, and 
fitted loosely about the ankles, and 
that fault drove it out of fashion. 

The trade of cobbling shoes, like 
the industry of making shoes, has 
changed much in the passing of 
years. The early New Englander, 
a jack of all trades, commonly cob- 
bled his own shoes. So do some 
thrifty people today, especially in 
the shoe manufacturing centres and 
in farming regions. Apprentices to 
the shoe trade often cobbled shoes in 
olden days. Sometimes they got a 
pair of large sized worn out boots, 
took them apart, cut them down, and 
made them over again, gaining a 
new pair of shoes, just as in some 
thrifty families, in olden days, a 
father's coat was cut down for the 
growing son. 

After more than two centuries of 
cobbling, in the simple old fashioned 
way, the cobbler is now yielding to 
the advance of machinery, as did 
the old time cordwainer. Modern 
repair shops are appearing in many 
large cities and towns. They are 
equipped with machines, that cor- 
respond to the machines used in 

69 



Shoe Making 



Bhoe factories, and they re-sole, or 
otherwise repair shoes, in the same 
manner in which shoes were made 
in the factories. The proprietors of 
these shops send out agents who go 
from door to door showing house- 
wives how new shoes may be made 
from old. Wagons, often motor 
trucks follow up the agents, and 
gather the shoes that are to be re- 
paired, and deliver them after they 
have been made to look like new. 

Old shoes are of trivial value, in 
the eyes of the prosperous Ameri- 
cans. But thrifty Americans now 
spend $100,000,000 annually in 
having their shoes repaired. This 
expenditure shows that Americans 
are not quite as wasteful as some 
economists would have us think. 

Americans are the best dressed 
people in the world. They have the 
Best footwear. They buy more new 
shoes, and pay more for new shoes, 
than do the people of any other 
country, and they spend more money 
in keeping their shoes shined, and in 
good repair, than do the people of 
any other nation. 

In early days, when many a man 
made his own shoes, a pair of shoes 
was made to last for years, and, as 
has been said, stout boots were some- 
times handed down from father to 
son. In the period of prosperity at 
the close of the 18th century, ac- 
cording to a writer of that time, 
"most women had two pairs of shoes, 
one pair of neats leather shoes for 
work day wear, and one pair of 
Lynn made shoes for Sunday best." 

Today, the average American has 
three pairs of shoes a year, and 



70 



Old and New 



spends more than $5 a year for foot- 
wear. The total retail trade in foot- 
wear exceeds $500,000,000. Wealthy 
persons keep on hand a dozen, a 
score or even more shoes, and so- 
ciety women have paid $50, even 
more than $100 a pair for fine 
shoes. 

In the days of hand shoemaking, 
the custom shoemaker flourished. 
A person of means went to his shop, 
had his feet measured, and the shoe 
maker made a pair of shoes for him. 
According to tradition, there never 
were shoes as nice and as comfort- 
able as these custom made shoes. 
They cost, by the way, from $10 to 
$15 a pair. But time has worn 
away the memory of the troubles 
that were frequently had with these 
custom made shoes. Usually, a per- 
son had to wait a week or more for 
them to be made up, and that^s a 
long time to wait when a person 
needs shoes. Often they didn't fit, 
and sometimes they did not appear 
as nice and stylish as the customer 
expected. Then there was wrang- 
ling over the quality of the shoes, 
and the price to be paid for them. 

Today, a person in need of shoes, 
goes directly to a store, and inspects 
a hundred and more different styles 
in shoes, sees the price plainly 
marked on them, knows the stylish 
appearance of the shoes as surely as 
he can believe his own eyes, and, if 
he is earnest in his intention to buy, 
the clerk will fit him with a pair of 
shoes, and he may wear them when 
he walks out of the store. He will 
pay $3 or $4 a pair for them, only a 
third as much as were paid for the 



Shoe Making 



custom made boots of years ago, and 
his shoes excel in quality the cus- 
tom made boots. 

So machinery, and the develop- 
ment of the manufacturing and mer- 
chandising of shoes, has conferred 
great benefit upon the people, for 
it gives them better shoes for less 
money, enables them to choose just 
the kind of shoes that they want, 
and it saves them time in buying 
shoes. 



^2 



Old and New 



PART XVII 



The story of goloshes is as curi- 
ous as the word itself.' Goloshes 
were known in Europe in the 14th 
century. Early settlers brought 
them to this country. They, and 
their immediate successors, clogs 
and pattens, were in fashion in this 
country for two centuries. No one of 
today, however, remembers when 
they were worn. They have disap- 
peared from stores, and the few pairs 
that remain are kept in historical 
museums. 

The original golosh was simply 
a piece of heavy leather cut in the 
shape of the sole of a shoe, and hav- 
ing strings by which it could be 
tied onto the shoe, like an extra sole. 
It provided an extra thickness of 
leather between the feet of its wear- 
er, and the cold wet earth beneath. 

Some ingenious and economical 
individual found, at some time or 
other, that a sole of wood would 
serve quite as well as a sole of 
leather for a golosh. Then another 
ingenious person discovered that the 
putting of blocks under the sole, at 
both toe and heel, lifted the wearer 
above the snow or mud. Some econ- 
omical man substituted iron rings 
for the wooden blocks, because the 
iron rings would wear longer. Some 
artistic person substituted bands of 



1\ 



Shoe Making 



leather for the plain strings, and 
found that the bands protected, as 
well as adorned the foot. Some aris- 
tocratic person put plates of brass 
upon the heels and toes of the soles. 
So the original goloshes grew into 
clogs and pattens. 

Colonists brought over these va- 
rious forms of storm footwear, and 
found them serviceable. The iron 
clad shoes clattered on hard paths, 
and on steps of houses. Dignified 
deacons of early New England post- 
ed signs at the entrance to their 
churches, requesting people to re- 
move their pattens and clogs before 
entering the church, so that their 
clatter would not disturb the con- 
gregation. 

At this point mention of foot 
stoves may be timely. Footwear of 
women of early New England was 
thin, and the goloshes, pattens, and 
clogs furnished but slight extra pro- 
tection. So it was the custom, on 
Sundays, for men of the Puritan 
homes to fill the foot stove with hot 
coals from the hearth, and to run 
to the meeting house with it, and 
put it into the family pew. This 
foot stove was a metal box, about 
the size of a modern shoe carton. 
It saved many lives, without doubt. 
The women folks who followed, 
warmed their feet on the stoves. 
These were, by the way, the only 
stoves in early New England 
churches, for a heating stove was 
regarded by some sturdy Puritans 
as a device of the devil to tempt peo- 
ple to enervating luxury. Men 
wore very heavy boots to church, 
and kept their feet warm by kicking 



74 



Old and New 



the pews, or stamping on the floor. 
Sympathetic preachers sometimes 
stopped in their long sermons and 
waited while men of the congrega- 
tion stamped their feet enough to 
get them warm. 

Goloshes have now been super- 
ceded by rubber boots and shoes. Co- 
lumbus saw natives playing with 
bounding balls, or balls of rubber, 
when he came here. But it was not 
until the middle of the nineteenth 
century that rubber became of real 
use to mankind. During that period 
of much invention which preceded 
the Civil War, a few men began to 
experiment with rubber. New Eng- 
land traders had brought crude rub- 
ber from the valley of the Amazon, 
and they told about the bowls and 
gourds that the natives made of it. 
The bowls held water perfectly 
tight so it naturally occurred to 
ingenious Yankees that if rubber 
would keep in water perfectly, it 
would also keep out water perfectly, 
and they undertook to make rain 
proof garments of it. 

After some difficulty they suc- 
ceeded in making rubber garments 
and it was predicted that the age of 
rubber was at hand, and that men 
would dress in rubber and that rub- 
ber would be used for the binding 
of books, the sails of vessels, the har- 
nesses of teams and for many other 
things for which cloth and leather 
are commonly used. 

But the early manufacturers of 
rubber goods were amazed to dis- 
cover that their product didn^t stand 
the test of wear. It was apt to melt 
in the heat and crack in the cold. 



85 



Shoe Making 



If a man put his rubber boots be- 
fore a fire to dry them, the rubber 
melted, and if he wore them in zero 
cold weather the cold might crack 
them. 

Hopes of the rubber age were 
vanishing when Charles Goodyear 
made his great discovery of the pro- 
cess of vulcanizing rubber. He was a 
poor, lean Yankee, with a wonderful 
mind, and the determination of a 
zealot. He was bound to make rub- 
ber. To carry on his experiments in 
rubber making, he experienced pov- 
erty, saw his family hunger, suffered 
imprisonment for debt, and under- 
went a painful ordeal of jeers and 
ridicule from his friends. He suc- 
ceeded at last. It is a tradition that 
he discovered the secret of vulcani- 
zing rubber while loitering in a gro- 
cery store. A bit of rubber, and a 
sulphur match dropped together 
from his pocket onto a warm stove. 
He noticed the curious action of 
the sulphur on the rubber, and it 
gave him the key to the process of 
vulcanizing rubber, and the process 
has made rubber of use to mankind. 

The process was one of the great 
inventions of modern industry. It 
has opened the way to the develop- 
ment of the great rubber goods man- 
ufacturing industries, to the man- 
ufacture of rubber shoes and cloth- 
ing that keeps away dampness and 
colds and saves lives, to the manu- 
facture of rubber tires for vehicles, 
oarticularly automobiles that are so 
swiftly advancing civilization, and to 
the production of a thousand and 
one articles that add to the health 
and happiness of humanity. 



76 



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